Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Daddy the Omnipresent

Phones are something that we take for granted as adults. The phone rings (or vibrates, or plays a calypso tune) and we answer it. For those people who we talk to regularly, we recognize their voice immediately. And for those people we've met, we can even associate an image with them (we can actually do this for those who we haven't met, but they might be inaccurate). But for babies like Kaylani, do they have that same recognition?

That question was in my mind for awhile, and today, Kaylani answered it. Like I do every day, I called Mommy on my way home to see how things were going. She happened to be changing Kaylani at the time, but answered anyways because she's super multi-tasking Mommy. Kaylani, who was a bit fussy at the time, wanted to say hi so Mommy put me on speakerphone. That's when we realized that Kaylani could recognize voices and associate images with them. The following is Mommy's account as told to Daddy.

"She was on the changing table about this far away (about 2 feet) and as soon as she heard your voice come through the phone, she stopped crying and stared up at it. But she didn't just stare it. Her eyes opened real wide and she started looking at it with her head sideways. Then she started to look all around to see where your voice was coming from! You could totally tell that she recognized your voice. But you weren't there so you are just a big tease. Jerk."

Okay, the last 2 sentences were made up, but I bet that's what went through both of their minds. It's kinda cool knowing that Kaylani can recognize my voice, but I really do wonder if she gets confused by what a phone is and how it works. I just hope she actually does recognize that there is some sort of machine that is relaying my voice. Otherwise, she may just think that I'm everywhere. Hmmm, maybe that's not the worst thing for her to think after all...